Former President Barack Obama appeared on the South Side on Wednesday to greet his first class of Obama Foundation fellows.

The gathering was held at the Stony Island Arts Bank, just steps from where the Obama Presidential Center is slated to be constructed. The meeting took place the day before Obama Foundation brass will present their plans for the center before the Chicago Plan Commission.

At Wednesday’s event, Obama, who began his career as a community organizer on the South Side, focused on the gathering of 20 civic innovators from 11 countries. “You couldn’t find a more exciting group of young people,” he said. “I want to welcome them to the South Side of Chicago.”

Foundation officials said Obama’s afternoon meeting was not related to the Plan Commission meeting. But the event was a demonstration of what the foundation hopes to do at the presidential center once it is constructed.

The fellows class was culled from more than 20,000 applications from 191 countries, the foundation said. They spent much of the week together at Starved Rock, learning about their work and listening to speakers such as Brene Brown, Juan Salgado and Ai-jen Poo.

But on Wednesday afternoon, they sat down for an hourlong roundtable with Obama himself. Former first lady Michelle Obama was scheduled to meet with them in that same space later in the afternoon, officials said.

While praising the group’s energy and vision, he also took a cleareyed view of the challenges they face.

“These folks don’t need inspiration, they just need money,” he said, smiling, to laughter and applause. “They need contacts; they need space for them to develop their ideas. But part of their job here is also going to be to help us train the 18-year-olds, the 25-year-olds who is just getting started, and to coach even younger change agents.”

The missions of the 2018 fellows are diverse, from empowering parents and teachers so they can improve schools, to ensuring that deaf children have equal access to literacy tools, to changing the way the health care system treats addictions.

Two Chicagoans were selected. Tiana Epps-Johnson of the Center of Technology and Civic Life, will work to improve voter turnout “by training elections officials to better communicate with voters and providing civic information through digital platforms,” according to the foundation. And Dominique Jordan-Turner of Chicago Scholars will work to help under-resourced youth gain admission into college and then complete their degrees.

At the end of his remarks, the president invoked his early days on the South Side.

“When I think about what first brought me to Chicago, I think it was imagining that somehow, I could have an impact, make a difference,” he said. “This city gave me that great gift, allowing me that first sense that if I worked with other people, that I could have an impact.”